BJP disagrees with Advani: Mahajan

Mahajan said nobody in the party agreed with Advani's comments on Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan.

Months after the controversy appeared to have died down, senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan has said nobody in the party agreed with senior leader LK Advani's comments on Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

"As far as his comments on Mohammad Ali Jinnah are concerned, 99 per cent of the people in the BJP did not agree with him.... We don't agree with what he said about Jinnah," Mahajan said in an interview to a private news channel.

However, he downplayed suggestions that Advani's apparent praise last year for the man the Sangh blames for India's partition showed a compromise with the RSS ideology.

"... Ninety-nine per cent of people have clarified what they wanted to say and Advani saying one thing does not damage the BJP's ideology," Mahajan remarked.

He, however, praised the 78-year-old leader for projecting the Sangh ideology otherwise with "maximum clarity".

"He (Advani) is the only person who brought maximum clarity to BJP ideology in the last two decades -- except on the Jinnah issue," Mahajan said.

The BJP leader, who dismissed suggestions of differences in the party on other matters, however, observed that the Jinnah comments did lack clarity.

"I think whenever you are communicating to one billion people, you should bring more and more clarity on what you think," Mahajan said.

The BJP ideology remained the same, but problems lay with its projection, Mahajan, who found the party as undergoing a crisis, insisted. "I don't think we are out of the crisis."